Attractive Ways to Curtain Door Windows

19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Friday, September 25, 1914: <<no entry>>

Glass doors are now very popular for the inside of the house. A good curtain treatment for these doors when they go from the dining room into the living room is shown here. A thin silk or net is often stretched from rods top and bottom to break the view while the dining table is being set. This treatment adds a charm and an interest to the doors.

Ladies Home Journal (October, 1914)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Since Grandma didn’t write anything a hundred-years-ago today, I thought that you might enjoy seeing some examples from 1914 of how to attractively curtain windows on doors.

A simple and pleasing treatment for the inside of a Colonial doorway is shown. Either scrim, net, or thin muslin may be used. Both the door curtains and the side-window curtains are stretched from brass rods at the top and bottom. This arrangement keeps the curtains in place. The fanlight above the door is also treated in an attractive way. The best method of arranging this is to have a heavy wire frame made to fit the semi-circular window. The material can then be easily attached to it and the wire frame adjusted to the window.

My 1915 farmhouse has french doors throughout the interior including leading into the living and dining rooms. We saw evidence of curtains having been hung from them. The horror! Can’t imagine covering up that lovely, ripply old glass today.

I’m always interested on what you will post when Grandma doesn’t have anything to say… I don’t know how you think of these things, but the variety and the history is fun for me to read. I’m sure Grandma would be proud! 🙂

On days like today, I just browse through the old magazines and books; and, when I find something that I personally find interesting, I’ll just go with it–and hope that my readers also find it interesting. 🙂

My mother used this method in the entry hall of the three family house she owned. I helped her take them down and put them up as she was always washing them. The brass rods had a little threaded “cover” on the ends that you unscrewed to release and screwed back to secure. Don’t they look lovely on glass doors and side windows? I hung a curtain in my home office over the glass door and was wishing I had the brass rods to use. Now I use magnetic rods over glass doors. Lovely posting. I agree with your readers – you find interesting related posts when Grandma doesn’t have anything to say. I think also your Grandmother would be proud to know that your readers also refer to her as “Grandma”.

We have a long narrow window along the side of our front door that goes to the floor. Your comment about washing the curtains reminded me of a dog we used have. He used to love to sit at that window and push the curtain aside so that he could peak out. We originally had a white curtain on the window that needed to be frequently washed because his nose would get it quite dirty. Eventually we bought a brown curtain that didn’t show the dirt nearly as much. 🙂

The article in the old Ladies Home Journal magazine that accompanied these pictures actually mentioned the wallpaper. This is what it said:

“The paper used for the frieze in this room is a good example of an English imported chintz. The colors are charmingly blended and the paper looks exceedingly well above the plain wood paneling. This paper costs 60 cents a roll.:

Those inside doors look so much like the ones between the living room and the dining room in my little old fixed up cape cod house in Cheshire, CT. I used the living room as my consulting room, so I needed privacy curtains over the doors. The window treatments were a bit more modern, but same idea.